The Washington Post - 02.11.2019

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

The Oklahoma Pardon and

Parole Board unanimously

approved the commutations, and

Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) said his office

would process the

recommendations for final

approval.

The board considered 814 cases

and recommended 527 inmates

for commutation. However, 65

are being held on detainers,

leaving 462 inmates to be

released Monday.

Voters approved a state

question in 2016 that made

simple drug possession and low-

level property crimes

misdemeanors instead of

felonies. Stitt signed a bill this

year that applied the ballot

measure to those sentences

retroactively.

Pardon and Parole Board head

Steve Bickley said the mass

release is the most on one day

since President Barack Obama

commuted the drug sentences of

330 federal prisoners on his last

day in office.

— Associated Press

community.

The home in the San Francisco

suburb of Orinda had been rented

on Airbnb for what the renter said

would be a family reunion, the

home’s owner said. But more than

100 people showed up and police

were called to the house late

Thursday night, Orinda police

Chief David Cook told the East

Bay Times.

Meanwhile in Utah, a 22-year-

old man was stabbed to death and

a 23-year-old man was fatally shot

at a Halloween party near the

small town of Roosevelt, east of

Salt Lake City, police said.

— Associated Press

OKLAHOMA

More than 400 inmates

to be freed in single day

Oklahoma will release more

than 400 inmates after a state

panel on Friday approved what

officials say is the largest single-

day mass commutation in U.S.

history.

GEORGIA

Prison for ex-officer

in fatal shooting

A former Georgia police officer
who was convicted of aggravated
assault and other crimes in the
fatal shooting of an unarmed,
naked man was sentenced Friday
to 12 years in prison.
Robert “Chip” Olsen was
responding to a call of a naked
man behaving erratically outside
an Atlanta-area apartment
complex in March 2015 when he
fatally shot 26-year-old Anthony
Hill, an Air Force veteran who
had been diagnosed with bipolar
disorder and PTSD. Olsen is white
and Hill was black.
Olsen was convicted of one
count of aggravated assault, two
counts of violating his oath of
office and one count of making a
false statement. Jurors acquitted
him on two counts of felony
murder.
DeKalb County Superior Court
Judge LaTisha Dear Jackson
sentenced Olsen to a total of 20
years, with 12 years to serve, and
eight years of probation.
— Associated Press

CALIFORNIA

Four killed in shooting

at Halloween party

Four people were killed and at
least three were wounded in a
shooting at a Halloween-night
party at a rental house in a
wealthy San Francisco Bay area

Politics & the Nation

BY TOM JACKMAN

They are some of the most
dreaded words a police officer can
hear: “Shoot me!” “Go ahead kill
me!” “Just do it!” The tortured
pleas often precede an episode of
“suicide by cop,” in which a person
in mental crisis, sometimes armed
with a knife or other weapon, bad-
gers a street cop to fire at them. Of
the nearly 1,000 fatal police shoot-
ings in the United States every
year, experts estimate about 100 of
those are suicide by cop.
But police departments do not
have a protocol for dealing with
these incidents. Officers typically
draw their weapons, repeatedly
shout “Drop the knife!” and hope
for the best. So a leading police
think tank launched a protocol
and training guide for suicide by
cop at the annual gathering of the
International Association of
Chiefs of Police meeting in Chica-
go this week, and some chiefs are
embracing the proposal as a smart
way to reduce police shootings.
The protocol from the Police
Executive Research Forum
(PERF), which has nearly every
metropolitan police chief as a
member, emphasizes that officers
must first consider their own safe-
ty and the safety of others, and the
guidance does not apply if the
subject has a gun. But in the vast
majority of incidents, the person is
unarmed, one new study shows, or
has a knife. PERF’s approach calls
for officers to not aim their weap-
on at the person, to move a safe
distance away and to engage them
in a conversation rather than to
shout commands.
“Pointing a gun at someone and
saying, ‘I’m here to save you,’ it
kind of has a mixed message,” said
Los Angeles Police Chief Michel

Moore, who thinks the guidance

makes sense. “We should do any-

thing we can to minimize the use

of force and maximize the saving

of lives.”

New York City Police Commis-

sioner James P. O’Neill said the

protocol was “innovative” and

noted “we want to try to minimize

officer-involved shootings, in part,

to minimize the long-term impact

they have on an officer’s health

and well-being.” He said he would

let officers know that “there is not

an expectation that you do this

every time. But when the situation

does present itself... do your best

to minimize shootings.”

Police commanders and those

who came up with the approach

expect some pushback.

“There may be circumstances

in which the officer is able to do

some or all of these things,” said

Jim Pasco, executive director of

the Fraternal Order of Police, re-

ferring to the protocol’s directions

to de-escalate a situation by not

using a weapon or commands.

“But the fact of the matter is, when

a person has a deadly weapon and

is employing life-threatening

force of some kind, it is unlikely

that all of the incidents are going

to be successfully resolved with-

out use of force.”

Officer Josh Hilling, a patrol

officer in Glendale, Ohio, who

helped draft the PERF protocol,

once shot a man who was walking

along a highway. The man at-

tacked him with a knife and was

later found incompetent to stand

trial in a separate case.

“I didn’t have any of this to fall

back on,” Hilling said. “All I had in

my head was to yell, ‘Drop the

knife, drop the knife!’ I yelled it

about 100 times, and it doesn’t

work.... Sometimes you’ve got to

figure out another way to get your

message across.”

Moore said the public is un-

aware of the “millions and bil-

lions” of police encounters that

start out hot and wind up vio-

lence-free. A new study published

by two psychologists at California

State University at Fullerton

found the number of potential sui-

cide by cop incidents in Los Ange-

les rarely resulted in lethal force.

Authors Alejandra Jordan and

Nancy R. Panza studied five years

of Los Angeles Police Department

data on such encounters. The de-

partment’s Mental Evaluation

Unit has specially trained officers

to handle mental health incidents

and tracked events in which sub-

jects either verbally declared they

wished to be killed by police or

acted in an aggressive manner to

encourage being shot. The study

found 419 such episodes in Los

Angeles over five years, from

2010 to 2015.

Of those 419 cases, Los Angeles

officers used lethal force only sev-

en times, killing five of the sub-

jects. One officer was injured.

“Less-lethal force,” such as stun

guns or bean bag projectiles, was

used 71 times. No force was used

the other 341 times, or 81 percent.

Moore said his Mental Evaluation

Unit had 70 fully trained officers

paired with mental health clini-

cians ready to respond to such

incidents 24 hours a day.

A ratio of 80 nonfatal outcomes

for every suicide by cop was en-

couraging to PERF’s Chuck Wex-

ler and Tom Wilson, who helped

create the protocol. But few de-

partments have the resources of

Los Angeles, and even that depart-

ment does not have a formal policy

for potential suicide by cop situa-

tions.

The PERF protocol has three

steps. The first is for officers to

ensure their own safety and the

public’s safety. The second warns

that “pointing a gun at a potential-

ly suicidal person will increase his

or her anxiety and exacerbate the

situation.” It advises officers to

consider keeping their guns un-

holstered and in “low ready” posi-

tion, or pointed at the ground.

PERF notes that less-lethal

weapons, whether stun guns, pep-

per spray or other means, often

don’t work as desired and can

escalate a situation.

The third step is to communi-

cate and try to make a connection

with the subject. People who have

decided to kill themselves “are not

going to respond to somebody giv-

ing commands,” said John Nicolet-

ti, a Denver psychologist who has

trained police in crisis interven-

tion and assisted PERF in creating

the protocol. “What the officer has

to do is figure out a way to estab-

lish a relationship with the per-

son.”

[email protected]

Police chiefs propose ways to reduce ‘suicide by cop’

DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

The New York City Police Department hosts its police academy graduation ceremony at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in 2017.

New three-step protocol

aims to lower number

of annual fatal incidents

DIGEST

BY DREW HARWELL

AND TONY ROMM

The U.S. government is investi-
gating the Chinese parent compa-
ny of the popular short-video app
TikTok, raising the stakes for a
tech giant under fire due to cen-
sorship and national security con-
cerns, according to two people
with knowledge of the probe.
The Committee on Foreign In-
vestment in the United States, a
cross-government group that re-
views foreign transactions involv-
ing American firms, is investigat-
ing the 2017 deal in which the
Beijing-based ByteDance bought a
popular karaoke app, Musical.ly,
for up to $1 billion, said the
sources, who spoke on the condi-
tion of anonymity because such
probes are confidential.

The Washington Post reported

last month that Sen. Marco Rubio

(R-Fla.) had requested such a

probe. Two other lawmakers —

Senate Democratic Leader

Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and Re-

publican Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.) —

have asked U.S. intelligence offi-

cials to commence their own re-

view of TikTok on national secu-

rity grounds, saying: “TikTok is a

potential counterintelligence

threat we cannot ignore.”

“I remain deeply concerned

that any platform or application

that has Chinese ownership or di-

rect links to China, such as TikTok,

can be used as a tool by the Chi-

nese Communist Party to extend

its authoritarian censorship of in-

formation outside China’s borders

and amass data on millions of

unsuspecting users,” Rubio said in

a statement Friday that praised

CFIUS for the probe.

The app has quickly become a

viral online hit, installed more

than 1.4 billion times around the

world and more than 120 million

times in the United States, accord-

ing to data from mobile research

firm Sensor Tower. In the first

three quarters of the year, its U.S.

downloads in the Apple and

Google app stores have beaten or

matched its more established ri-

vals, Facebook, Snapchat and

Instagram.

The Treasury Department de-

clined to comment, citing federal

law that prevents CFIUS cases

from being disclosed to the public.

Reuters on Friday first reported

the review.

In response, TikTok pointed to

its previous statements emphasiz-

ing its independence from China.

The company has in recent weeks

said it has never removed a video

at the request of Chinese govern-

ment officials while noting that

U.S. users’ data is stored here and

that it is not subject to Beijing’s

surveillance laws.

Chaired by the treasury secre-

tary, CFIUS has a wide-ranging

investigative mandate and the

power to retroactively terminate

deals, levy fines or push corporate

changes. The group also has the

authority to review transactions

long after they were finalized.

David Hanke, a former Senate

Intelligence Committee aide and

partner at Arent Fox who special-

izes in CFIUS matters, said he

found it unsurprising that CFIUS

would review the deal but added

“it’s somewhat atypical of the

kinds of deals that CFIUS has

found problematic in the past.”

Their concerns could be based for

instance, he said, on sensitive per-

sonal data or on the propaganda

potential or censorship of Ameri-

cans who might be expressing

views contrary to China’s policies

on Hong Kong, Taiwan or Tibet.

Richard Sofield, a partner at the

law firm Wiley Rein and former

Justice Department lawyer who

oversaw national security review

of technology trade, said the re-

view highlights CFIUS’s increas-

ingly aggressive role in scrutiniz-

ing deals governing Internet firms

with global audiences.

“They’re starting to home in on

the concern about data compa-

nies, social media companies and

their ability to influence the way

people think,” Sofield said.

The heightened scrutiny coin-

cides with ongoing trade tensions

between the United States and

China, which have imposed

rounds of tariffs on each other in

the absence of a deal demanded by

President Trump.

With TikTok, congressional

lawmakers have grown increas-

ingly concerned about the compa-

ny’s handling of political content

and its approach to privacy. Their

fears stem from the fact that Tik-

Tok is owned by a Chinese-based

conglomerate, ByteDance, which

must censor its services in that

country to satisfy the govern-

ment’s strict censorship demands.

[email protected]

[email protected]

Ellen Nakashima contributed to this

report.

U.S. government investigating TikTok app over national security concerns

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